Chief Improvement Officer Skip Steward on Leading Change in Healthcare

Key Takeaways

• Implemented A3 process aligning 24k staff to four care themes
• Emphasizes “What are we trying to accomplish?” for clarity
• Uses TWI Job Relations to turn respect into daily skill
• Applies humble inquiry to foster collaborative problem solving
• Reduced multidisciplinary meeting from two hours to fifteen minutes

Summary

Skip Steward, VP and Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care, has spent the past thirteen years embedding a strategic A3 deployment process that organizes work around right care, right time, right place, and right cost. By drilling down to the simple question “What are we trying to accomplish?” he forces teams to clarify purpose before taking action. His team reinforces this with TWI Job Relations and humble inquiry, turning respect for people into an operational habit. The approach has already trimmed a two‑hour multidisciplinary patient review to a focused fifteen‑minute session, demonstrating measurable gains without relying on a single technology solution.

Pulse Analysis

In today’s volatile health‑care environment, leaders increasingly search for frameworks that balance operational rigor with human insight. Skip Steward’s adaptation of the A3 problem‑solving methodology provides that balance, translating a lean‑manufacturing tool into a hospital‑wide language of "right care, right time, right place, right cost." By embedding these four pillars into daily workflows, Baptist Memorial has cultivated a shared mental model across its 24,000‑strong workforce, ensuring that strategic intent filters down to the bedside without dilution.

The cultural dimension of Steward’s approach is equally critical. Leveraging Training Within Industry (TWI) Job Relations, he converts abstract respect for staff into concrete, repeatable behaviors, enabling teams to address conflicts objectively. Complementing this, humble inquiry—asking open‑ended questions without preconceptions—breaks down hierarchical barriers, encouraging frontline clinicians to voice insights that drive incremental change. These practices nurture a learning organization where continuous improvement is a collective responsibility rather than a top‑down mandate.

Steward’s skepticism toward quick‑fix technologies, including AI, underscores a broader industry lesson: sustainable transformation stems from hypothesis‑driven experimentation rather than single‑solution hype. The fifteen‑minute multidisciplinary review meeting, distilled from a two‑hour session through iterative testing, exemplifies how modest, data‑backed adjustments can yield outsized efficiency gains. As health systems grapple with rising costs and patient expectations, this people‑first, evidence‑based playbook offers a scalable pathway to higher quality care and operational resilience.